Abstract

Giovanni Capellini (La Spezia, 23 August 1833 - Bologna, 28 May 1922) is recognized as one of the Italian founders of the modern geological sciences. Professor of Geology at the University of Bologna, his innate qualities as manager and coordinator were combined with a penchant to overcome a provincial vision of scientific problems. During his life, he gave the Bologna Geological Institute an international organization and also relaunched the whole University that was being built at the end of the 19th Century with a keen eye on worldwide relationships among scholars. During his intense academic life, he also dealt with petroleum geology, a field still in its infancy at the time. Capellini was engaged in this activity as an academic consultant on behalf of domestic and foreign oil companies. A recent survey of the archival sources of the Geological Collection “Giovanni Capellini Museum” of the University of Bologna, confirmed the existence of a manuscript, the travelogue of Capellini’s journeys to Wallachia, two field trips that he organized in 1864 and 1865 as a consultant to a London oil company. In fact, Wallachia, together with Italy, was the European region where hydrocarbons exploration developed the most, immediately after the North American oil boom of 1859. This travelogue was never published or transcribed, and so the centenary of Capellini’s death (2022), celebrated in Bologna and in La Spezia, was the opportunity for me to bring this document back to light: in fact, the complete transcription of the manuscript is attached at the end of the paper. The travelogue contains stratigraphic sketches, geographical and geomorphological considerations, and various drafts of geological sections, i.e., the typical contents of the surveyor geologist field notebook, nonetheless it is also structured as an agenda of daily notes, a sort of travel diary, albeit minimal in its narrative structure. More important, it offers a first-hand account of the multifaceted activity of a young researcher and scientist already fully integrated into the European cultural milieu.